The construction and operation of dangerous nuclear reactors - and the infrastructure needed to support them - inevitably flout civil liberties. Most recently, the opportunities for public intervention against proposed new reactors have been severely curtailed, often leaving a window open largely after the project is a fait accompli.

Don't Waste Michigan board members Michael Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps call for Palisades' permanent shutdown at the 2000 Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp, on the Lake Michigan beach at Van Buren State Park, with the atomic reactor's cooling tower steam visible in the backgroundJudging by Entergy's several years worth of security failures at Palisades, and breaches going back over a decade at other Entergy nuclear power plants such as Indian Point near New York City, the answer to that question is quite dubious.

Concerns include threats to civil liberties, such as the right to peacably assemble, and freedom of speech, without fear of lethal force being used by heavily armed, overworked, and perhaps inadequately trained, security guards. Guards who may soon be granted immunity, under state law, if they wrongfully shoot someone dead, whether a protestor, kayaker, or hiker.

NBC 5 Chicago reporter Chris Coffey interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, regarding the security failures at Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor on the shore of Lake Michigan -- Chicago's drinking water supply. Kevin warned that the security department at Palisades is a "chilled work environment," because guards are reluctant to raise safety and security concerns for fear of being harassed, retaliated against, and even fired by their own management. Kevin added that "They've got a very serious safety and security and accident potential at Palisades because of the age of the reactor."

We express our strong solidarity with EcoDefence activists based in Russia, whose anti-nuclear NGO has been declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice. The Russian government must immediately stop this repression of environmentalists. We as individuals concerned with human rights of activists need to demand that EcoDefense be allowed to work freely.

Ecodefense co-chair Vladimir Slivyak. (Source: Bellona)Vladimir Slivyak (photo left) sent the following reply in response to Beyond Nuclear's signing the petition in solidarity with EcoDefense. If you haven't already signed the petition, do so now at the link above, and spread the word!

Dear Friend,

Thank you for signing letter of solidarity with the Russian environmental group Ecodefense. As you already know, we have been targeted in an attack by the Russian government seeking to declare our organization a “foreign agent” because of our opposition to the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kaliningrad Region, in Russia’s Northwest. Last year, our efforts finally succeeded in bringing that construction to a stop. We did it for one simple reason: Both Fukushima and Chernobyl demonstrated very clearly that radioactive contamination doesn’t know state borders and a nuclear accident in one country may affect millions of people across the planet. Our aim is to prevent nuclear accidents in the future.

Now the government wants to slap the “foreign agent” label on Ecodefense. The government wants people to believe that our anti-nuclear campaign was conducted for the benefit of some evil “foreign interests” scheming to destroy the Russian economy. The Russian Ministry of Justice is taking us to court on a charge of noncompliance with the “foreign agent law” – a violation carrying fines of up to $22,000, which could be levied both against the organization and personally against its director. The first court hearing is to be announced soon and is expected to take place sometime this summer.

Ecodefense – one of the oldest Russian environmental groups – has been actively defending the environmental rights of Russian citizens since 1989. Now our future depends on this court battle. If the Russian government wins its case, we will be forcibly shut down, as we cannot pay such fines and we will not accept the official label of a “foreign agent” – which, in turn, will likely lead to more fines.

Below you will find a detailed article we at Ecodefense have written to tell you more about the “foreign agent” law and why the government is trying to shut us down.

If you would like to do more to support Ecodefense in Russia, please feel free to distribute this information as broadly as possible. Send it around, tell reporters in mass media about it. International publicity makes it harder for the Russian government to pursue its agenda of repression against anti-nuclear activists. Ecodefense is the first environmental group in Russia to be facing punishment for anti-nuclear protests under the “foreign agent” law. We will resist, and we need your support.

We may ask you in the future to send letters to the Russian authorities or sign new petitions. Please let us know if you do not wish to receive further e-mails from Ecodefense.

Sincerely,

Vladimir Slivyak,

Ecodefense, co-chairman

Moscow-Kaliningrad, Russia

******

Not a “foreign agent”: Who wants to slap the label on Ecodefense and why resisting it matters

Published on July 4, 2014 by Vladimir Slivyak, MOSCOW–In 2012, Russia adopted the notorious law that forces to register as “foreign agents” non-governmental organizations that engage in “political activities” and also receive funding from abroad. Since then, no organization actually engaged in political activity has come to harm from the new law. Rather, trouble started for those who have always distanced themselves from the political process and focused on protecting the rights of Russian citizens.

In 2013, a group of eleven NGOs – with, mostly, human rights organizations as well as the environmental group Ecodefense among them – filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the “foreign agent” law violated the rights of Russian citizens. Court proceedings are currently pending.

In June 2014, the Russian Ministry of Justice embarked on a campaign aimed at labeling Ecodefense, which is one of Russia’s oldest environmental organizations, as a “foreign agent.” This is the first such attack against an environmental NGO since a legislative change that came into effect in early June gave the ministry discretion to forcibly include non-governmental organizations on the “foreign agent” roster (thus expanding significantly the authorities’ mandate, which had previously required that a prosecutorial inspection first make a “foreign agent” finding against an NGO and then have that claim supported by a court decision).

This new show of force began with the “foreign agent” designation slapped onto five human rights advocacy groups; now, a show trial is starting against Ecodefense, to “bring into check” the environmental movement.

The Russian Ministry of Justice. (Source: minjust.ru)

Having completed its inspection of Ecodefense in early June, the Ministry of Justice asserts plainly in its summary of inspection that Ecodefense is a “foreign agent” by saying that “the organization has been conducting political activity, including in the interests of foreign [funding] sources.” The ministry has not, however, put us on its “foreign agent” roster yet. One possible explanation for this may be that the ministry is awaiting to see its assertion confirmed in court, where it has already submitted papers claiming an “administrative violation” – the charge being that the organization did not voluntarily register itself as a “foreign agent.” This means that, besides the prospect of being officially labelled a “foreign agent,” Ecodefense is facing fines amounting to several hundred thousand rubles.

So what exactly is at the root of the authorities’ actions?

The ministry’s intentions were clear from the start: Along with all sorts of technical paperwork of general nature, the officials had requested specifically all documents that pertain to the organization’s campaign against the construction of the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant in Kaliningrad Region. The ministry showed no such interest in Ecodefense’s educational or climate change programs or its work evaluating the Russian coal industry’s impact on the environment and public health, or indeed any other projects. And, as it follows from the summary of inspection that Ecodefense received from the ministry on June 16, the organization’s campaign against the nuclear power plant was what in fact served as the basis for this “foreign agent” labeling.

Our campaign against the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant had started in 2007 – when information had just surfaced that the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom was looking to build a nuclear power plant in the enclave of Kaliningrad Region to export energy to Russia’s European neighbors – and succeeded in convincing a number of European banks to deny financing for the construction; several major energy companies in Europe have also declined to invest into Rosatom’s project, and, similarly, no contracts for future electricity have been signed with potential customers. Europe’s financial participation could have given Rosatom the needed market entry to sell nuclear power to European grids – but the plan failed, and the construction was ceased in June last year. Kaliningrad Region has plenty of energy of its own, and there is no exporting electricity to customers who do not want to buy it from a plant no one wants to invest money to see built. Stopping the Baltic nuclear project was a major success for the environmental movement and one for which Ecodefense owes a great debt of gratitude to its partners in Europe, who helped make it happen.

A protest mock-up of the Baltic NPP in Kaliningrad from 2010. (Source: Bellona)

Now, the justice ministry sees Ecodefense’s campaign against this construction as political, not environmental activity. This, after Fukushima and Chernobyl – two catastrophes that showed to the world what irreparable environmental harm nuclear power can wreak. The accusation appears all the more absurd if one takes into account that opposition to the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant is a sentiment shared by a wide majority of Kaliningrad residents. Apparently, these Russian citizens are all “foreign agents,” too. Or at least they think like “foreign agents.”

There is more intriguing detail. In April last year, Ecodefense underwent a prosecutorial inspection. That was a period when the November 2012 “foreign agent” law had failed to yield the anticipated effect – independent organizations across the country stood up en masse against the law, refusing to register themselves as “foreign agents” – so the state deployed prosecutors in countless raids against NGOs in search of offenders. But prosecutors who visited Ecodefense discovered no violations – no evidence to support a finding that the organization was “acting as a foreign agent.” Having the same identical documents under its examination that prosecutors did a year ago, the Ministry of Justice now suddenly comes exactly to the opposite conclusion. What changed between the two inspections? Nothing other than that the nuclear power plant construction in Kaliningrad Region was stopped.

Furthermore, the summary of the ministry’s inspection lists information about Ecodefense’s activities that was neither in the documents submitted for the inspection nor could have come from media sources. There is nothing sensational or secret about this information – it only details a small part of the organization’s work when the Baltic nuclear project was undergoing various stages of the environmental impact assessment. The ministry unlikely has resources to surveil Ecodefense so closely, not to mention that the work in question took place some five years ago, long before the passing of the “foreign agent” law. So how did the ministry obtain this information? More to the point, why would the ministry be so interested in the minutiae of the work conducted several years ago by an environmental organization opposing construction of a nuclear power plant?

But access to the information that the Ministry of Justice cites in its inspection summary is certainly available to Rosatom. In theory, such information could also be on the files of the Federal Security Service, but the details are of much too insignificant and trivial a nature to draw the attention of the secret service. This is why my bet is on Rosatom as the ministry’s likely source of information. By all appearances, it would seem Ecodefense’s activists have long been under close scrutiny, and there is very serious doubt that this scrutiny falls entirely within the bounds of the law.

That said, that law is pliable is hardly surprising – not when a justice ministry official calls Ecodefense after the formal conclusion of the ministry’s inspection to demand more documents on the ostensible grounds that the inspection has been extended, while it later turns out that no extension was issued and the summary was back-dated… In fact, the very idea of conforming to law looks moot when the law requires an organization to voluntarily brand itself with a demeaning tag for supposedly conducting “political activity” – a concept the law leaves subject to broad enough interpretation so any authority is welcome to read what it pleases into it.

Since being declared a “foreign agent” by the Ministry of Justice, we have received dozens of statements of solidarity from all over the world. Ecodefense is grateful for the moral and other support of the human rights advocacy groups Memorial and Public Verdict Foundation in Russia, Greenpeace, the world-famous anti-nuclear movement BI Lüchow-Dannenberg in Germany, the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine, the U.S.-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, the German urgewald and BBU, Norway’s Bellona and Friends of the Earth, Climate Action Network Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, and 350.org, and many others who have spoken out in our defense. We are very thankful to the members of the Left Party and the Greens in the German Bundestag. And besides the kind words of support, and the statements of concern and protest over the Russian government’s actions, there have also been in the past two weeks requests to describe what it is that non-governmental organizations find so problematic with the “foreign agent” status – why are we fighting it? Let me try to explain it from the point of view of Ecodefense.

Working as an NGO in Russia has never been easy. It is without doubt, though, that the “foreign agent” designation spells its own set of difficulties: the increased scrutiny from state authorities that translates into more inspections, or the need to keep additional specialists on staff – lawyers and accountants – which is beyond what a small organization like Ecodefense can realistically afford. Given the scarce resources, the day-to-day work that an organization has been created to do is thus effectively finished; what follows is inspections, more inspections, court hearings, and fines. This naturally forces the organization to stop its activities and close because an NGO like Ecodefense does not earn any money; we are a non-profit organization. The Ministry of Justice, as it was making its decisions, was well aware of our situation. In other words, they are not just intent on closing us down, they are intent on shutting Ecodefense down as a “foreign agent.”

And yet, this is not the main problem, and not the main reason why the status of a “foreign agent” is unacceptable to us. Agreeing to be labeled as a “foreign agent” would mean compromising one’s moral standards and misleading the public and the Russian state. We are being forced to admit to a violation we have not committed.

Ecodefense has always conducted its activities in accordance with decisions made by its board, a council consisting of Russian citizens, and never in the interests of any foreign citizens, organizations, or governments. As a matter of principle, Ecodefense has never in its history participated in politics – elections or any other actions aimed at gaining access to political power. Never has our organization even agitated for or endorsed any politician, Russian or foreign.

Being designated as a “foreign agent” would harm the reputation we have worked for many years to build and would create a false impression that environmental work is undertaken in the interest of some foreign entities when in fact it is undertaken to defend the ecological rights of Russian citizens.

Therefore, Ecodefense will never agree to the “foreign agent” status. We know that Russian courts almost always side with the state, and we do not entertain high hopes for a just decision when we face these charges in court. But some little hope we do hold out – and we will fight to continue our work in Russia. Too severe is Russia’s environmental situation, and too much is left to do yet to abandon this fight.

This comment was written by Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of the environmental group Ecodefense and frequent contributor to Bellona Web, and translated, with slight changes, for Bellona’s English page. The Russian original of this text first appeared on the website of the radio station Ekho Moskvy on June 30, 2014.

The NRC didn't lie, but it also didn't tell the whole truth. This begs the question -- should a federal agency, financed with U.S. taxpayer dollars, be in the business of concealing the truth from and deceiving the American people and news media?

As reported by NBC News's Bill Dedman, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Office of Public Affairs defended its own image, as well as that of the nuclear power industry, as its top priority during the first days of the fast-breaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe three years ago. As revealed by internal NRC emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), NRC went so far as to attack Dedman's own reporting at the time, when he used a little known NRC report published in 2010 to rank the seismic risk at atomic reactors across the U.S. The confusion created by NRC's attack on Dedman's reporting dissuaded other news outlets, including the New York Times, from mentioning NRC's ranking of seismic risks -- of which Entergy Nuclear's twin reactor Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River near New York City had the worst ranking in the U.S. 21 million people live or work within 50 miles of Indian Point. In 2008, seismologists at Columbia University warned about previously unknown earthquake fault lines near Indian Point.

Environmental coalition attorney Diane CurranA Petition for Rulemaking was filed on Feb. 18th by Washington, D.C.-based attorney, Diane Curran (photo, left), as well as Mindy Goldstein of the Emory U. Turner Environmental Law Clinic, to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Petition seeks to re-open the License Renewal GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Statement), in order to consider new and significant information about irradiated nuclear fuel storage impacts that was generated by the NRC Staff during the Expedited Spent Fuel Transfer proceeding, carried out under NRC's Fukushima "Lessons Learned" activities. Curran and Goldstein filed the Petition on behalf of three dozen environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear.

One of these risks newly recognized by NRC Staff is the contribution of high-level radioactive waste storage pool risks to reactor catastrophes, and vice versa.

NRC staff has also admitted that release into the environment of even a small fraction of the contents of a high-level radioactive waste storage pool could cause the long-term dislocation of more than 4 million people, and could render more than 9,000 square miles of land uninhabitable for long time periods. What would the socio-economic costs of such a catastrophe be? Don't people have the inalienable right to safety, health, and environmental protection?

The filing urges that no reactor license extensions be approved by NRC until the Petition for Rulemaking has been integrated into NRC's safety regulations.

Safecast is a network of volunteers who came together to map radiation levels throughout Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011. They soon realized radiation readings varied widely, with some areas close to the disaster facing light contamination, depending on wind and geography, while others much further away showed higher readings. Safecast volunteers use Geiger counters and open-source software to measure the radiation, and then post the data online for anyone to access. Broadcasting from Tokyo, we are joined by Pieter Franken, co-founder of Safecast. "The first trip we made into Fukushima, it was an eye-opener. First of all, the radiation levels we encountered were way higher than what we had seen on television," Franken says. "We decided to focus on measuring every single street as our goal in Safecast, so for the last three years we have been doing that, and this month we are passing the 15 millionth location we have measured, and basically every street in Japan has been at least measured once, if not many, many more times."

The atomic reactors that melted down and exploded at Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 were General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors. The U.S. has 23 still-operating Mark Is, as well as 8 more very similarly designed Mark IIs.

Amy Goodman asks Pieter Franken how Japan's new State Secrets Act will impact the work of Safecast in Japan. Franken said it should not impact Safecast's work at all, as collecting such radioactivity contamination data is civil society's right. In fact, the government should be doing it, but is not. Even if the government were doing it, citizens should watchdog and verify the government's data.